OPINION:
Last month, I shared how America is sleepwalking toward a debt cliff. I promised a solution.
That solution is deceptively simple: Get the public to fear the status quo and demand change. The rest is math.
A current example of this process: Witness the rapid evolution in polling from compassion for open immigration to supporting mass deportations. Highlighting immigrant crime and taxpayer dependency over several years triggered what I last wrote about: the demand for change once people understand and fear the short-term personal consequences of inaction.
People are unprepared for reductions in government spending because we continually ignore reality. History suggests if you offer up specific spending cuts, you invite all the focus on who gets harmed. The debate is a lesson in government paralysis while the larger threat of inaction is tossed into a ditch. The idea of debt reduction, no matter how fair or balanced, dies in its infancy. The $36 trillion debt keeps growing at $2 million a minute. That is just the recurring interest on our past debt.
So, for my promised solution, we must first do the hard part. Politicians and media need to relentlessly support the broad-based need — no, the demand — for radical changes without getting lost in the “how” of doing it. Radical changes will come from a shared sense of fear.
Among the Washington policy elite is a level of conceit that everyone understands policy challenges. We only need to find the right mix of cuts and revenue raisers. But the Beltway is a bubble. Most people in the country have no fear of $36 trillion in debt. They must be frightened by the personal consequences of a serious information campaign. I’m not talking about a “Smokey Bear” pitch on preventing forest fires or a Nancy Reagan plan to “Just Say No” on drugs. We must sense the dragon terrorizing our villages before embracing the white knight.
Dragon fire is raging all around us. The U.S. credit rating is now regularly in danger of being downgraded. At risk are increased interest rates on mortgages and auto loans. Cutting back on Social Security payments that have been overpromised is real. Changing eligibility filters for a raft of social programs, including food and housing supplements, will become necessary as servicing the debt sucks up all available revenue. This isn’t theory; it’s math. We are racing to the point where there is no visible path back without lots of blood on the floor.
Viable solutions are available before real cuts, such as freezing current entitlement payments, adjusting future entitlement ages and tweaking eligibility levels for those not yet covered. Increases in taxation on stock trades or denials in benefits for those most fortunate will be part of any reforms. Today, these ideas are just about rearranging deck chairs and debating them is irrelevant. We won’t get a consensus in a divided government. All the focus must be on getting people to believe that inaction is impossibly dangerous. At that point, benefit cuts will be embraced over the status quo.
Boat captains will tell you to seek any port in a raging storm. A bipartisan consensus among leaders is the port that fully satisfies no one. Yet, it must be accepted before we all drown.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal gained support from fearful Republicans, outweighing any pushback from conservative voices. After he made the case for change, President Reagan passed comprehensive tax and immigration reforms with a Democratic Congress.
We have seen signs of bipartisanship on the debt issue. Early in the Obama years, Democrats often sounded like fiscal conservatives. In 2010, the Obama administration enlisted Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson — one Democrat, one Republican — to help balance the budget, excluding debt interest, by 2015 for the sake of “fiscal sustainability.” The plan recommended that discretionary spending be capped through 2020, with defense and nondefense spending reduced equally. However, politicians, including President Obama, wouldn’t embrace the suggested painful cuts because their constituents had not yet evidenced concerns.
Today, the real debt solution involves a menu of changes that are not difficult to imagine. The hard part is getting a fearful consensus. Without that, the inescapable math will soon dictate a reality that will become impossible to manage.
• Rick Berman serves as president of RBB Strategies and on the board of the RAM Veterans Foundation.
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